DETAILS
COMPOSED for and PREMIERED at the Cornell University 1978 Commencement ceremony.

PROGRAM NOTES
At some point in my Senior year of college, I had the vision of writing the Glee Club's anthem to perform at the university graduation in front of about 30,000 students and parents in the campus football stadium. I proposed this to Professor Sokol, the choral director, and he said yes on two conditions: that I deliver the music by two weeks before commencement, and that I sing in the Glee Club for the ceremony.

As with much of my vocal music from college, it was easy to find relevant poetry from the Carmina Burana collection of poems by "wandering scholars" who were erudite young adults, glad to be out of the university. In the course of setting the medieval adolescents' poetry to appropriate-sounding music for commencement, I managed to include quotes of Gaudeamus Igitur, the Cornell Alma Mater "Far Above Cayuga's Waters," and several instances of the word "Graduation" set to Handel's appropriate "Hallelujah" (see bar 29 in the excerpt shown).